International Development and Programs (Development Work) - International Development and Programs (Development Work)

USAID Corporate Governance Survey 2003 - 2004: A Census of 416 Joint Stock Companies in Macedonia. Thomas Patrick Carson, Ph.D. and Dr. Gregory F. Maassen.

This report provides the findings from the Corporate Governance Enterprise Survey carried out among joint stock companies in Macedonia in August 2003. The report also includes selected findings from a public opinion survey of adults in Macedonia on the awareness of the Macedonian company law, shareholder rights and issues related to private sector development conducted by the USAID Corporate Governance and Company Law Project (CG&CL Project) in July 2003.

The main findings presented here result from a complete census, with an overall completion rate of 92% of all active joint stock companies now operating in Macedonia. This high completion rate, along with additional steps taken to verify the data, provides the most accurate description possible of corporate governance at this point in the development of the private sector in Macedonia.

High levels of resources allocated for the research produced the quality of results reported here. But, more importantly, the success of this component of the research program results from participation by leading institutions in Macedonia. A cornerstone of this participation was Ms. Milica Georgieva, Head Legal Department of the Ministry of Economy who directly encouraged Macedonian joint stock companies to participate in this research and then used the findings of this research to develop an open and transparent drafting process for the new company law which passed Parliament on 30 April, 2004.

Other leading members of the Macedonian Corporate Governance Council including the Securities and Exchange Commission (Dr. Vesna Pendovska), the Stock Exchange (Milco Kupev), the Central Depository (Stevan Sapceski), the Skopje Regional Chamber of Economy (Aleksandar Atanasovski and Arizankovska Jadranka) and the Macedonia Business Lawyers Association (Liljana Cekovska) supported this research through participation on a Corporate Governance Advisory Committee that reviewed all key steps in the research program carried out in 2003. Samir Latif (senior legal advisor CG&CL-Project) coordinated support from these key Macedonia institutions.

Thomas Patrick Carson, Ph.D. (senior research specialist CG&CL-Project) had overall responsibility for conducting the research, with the assistance of Snezana Kiradziska and Marjan Mihajlov of the CG&CL-Project. The research methodology was designed by Darrell Brown (senior legal advisor CG&CL-Project) and Dr. Gregory F. Maassen (Chief of Party CG&CL Project). Fieldwork was carried out between June 3 – August 10, 2003 by Strategic Marketing and Media Research in Skopje under the direction of Blagica Micov. Data entry and preparation of questionnaires was carried out by Stratum Research in Skopje under the direction of Boge Bozinovski.